JOE:'Today's Dengineer is nine-year-old Nya from manchester.'
NYA:Please Dengineers help me. I really want a martial arts den so I can practice my speed, stamina and strength whenever I want.
OLGA:Hi Nya. You have chosen all the Japanese traditional images. So I thought that would be a nice base for the outside of your den.
NYA:It sounds like really, really good and cool.
OLGA:Brilliant.
JOE:'Olga's plans have been given a big tick from Nya. 'She's designed the outside of the den 'to look like a traditional Japanese tea house 'complete with cool sliding doors.
JOE:'On the inside, Nya will have a chin-up bar, 'punch bag, as well as an awesome wing chun wooden dummy 'to help her develop and improve her martial arts skills.
JOE:'Nya's den has two spectacular sliding doors 'and I want to find out the engineering challenges 'this has brought to chief carpenter, David.'
JOE:Dave.
DAVE:Joe.
JOE:Sliding doors.
DAVE:Yes.
JOE:I like them.
DAVE:OK.
JOE:Can you tell me more about them because I don’t know how they work.
DAVE:Well I can give you a bit of a demo. If you imagine this is the main structure of the den.
JOE:OK.
DAVE:This is the door. Very rough textured. If you just put them two together.
JOE:Yep.
DAVE:Friction would take over and they'd be really stiff and wouldn't move very easily. So they wouldn't slide. We had to get around that somehow to make them slide nice and easy.
JOE:Yeah.
DAVE:So what we do is we make a channel.
JOE:Yeah.
DAVE:Something like that.
JOE:OK.
DAVE:Yes?
JOE:Right.
DAVE:But there's this magic ingredient that you need to make this work properly.
JOE:Exciting.
DAVE:Which are–
JOE:Ball bearings. Ball bearings, really?
DAVE:Ball bearings are the key to this. So we place all the ball bearings
JOE:OK, you fill the channels with the balls.
DAVE:Yep.
JOE:Got ya.
DAVE:OK. What we do then is take our doorframe.
JOE:Right.
DAVE:Place it on top.
JOE:Yeah.
DAVE:How does that slide?
JOE:Oh wow!
JOE:So the ball bearings act like little wheels almost.
DAVE:They do. They work as little wheels, they've taken all the weight off.
JOE:Yeah.
DAVE:The channel stops them sliding off and falling all over the place and it just makes a nice easy sliding door.
JOE:I really feel like I've learned something Dave, thank you.
DAVE:No problem mate.
JOE:'The key components in these sliding doors 'are the ball bearings that sit inside the wooden channels 'reducing the amount of friction between the main structure of the den 'and the doors, allowing them to slide easily 'when opening and closing.
JOE:'These clever channels can be positioned 'at the bottom of the door, the top, or even both.'
Presenters Lauren Layfield and Joe Tracini and The Dengineers team help martial arts lover Nya create a traditional Japanese-themed den.
They investigate the engineering challenges of creating the sliding doors, and demonstrate how ball bearings can be used to remove any friction. The balls act as little wheels allowing the doors to slide easily when opening and closing.
Teacher Notes
This could be used to introduce the process of design, and as a prompt for class discussion and learning in areas such as initial research, designing and making a structure.
They could investigate friction, and work in groups to discover other materials that could be used to reduce the friction between the doors and the frame?
They could list the properties of ball bearings that make them so useful at reducing friction and suggest other ways they could be used.
Curriculum Notes
This clip will be relevant for teaching Design and Technology at KS2 in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland and 1st and 2nd level in Scotland.
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